Drums, cymbals and dance music – what a way to kick off the VMworld 2016 Europe day one keynote. Once the last cymbal had faded away, it was followed by what can only be described as business technology poetry, looking at the fundamental ways technology is making our lives better. Once we were sufficiently warmed up, senior vice president and General Manager for EMEA, Jean-Pierre Brulard took to the stage, revealing just how big this year’s VMworld 2016 Europe is, with:

Over 2,900 partners

10,000+ attendees

More than 2,000 VMUG customers

170+ journalists and bloggers

96 countries

JP then introduced VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger, who kicked off the main part of the keynote with his predictions for the future of corporate IT. Pat’s main prediction was that by 2030, 52% of all IT infrastructure would be hosted on public clouds rather than private cloud or traditional IT environments. He also touched on the massive growth of connected devices, estimating that by Q1 2019, there will be more connected devices than connected people!

All of this helped set the scene for Pat’s big announcements – Cross-Cloud Architecture, Cloud Foundation and VMware Cloud on Amazon Web Services.

While both of these solutions have previously been announced, today’s keynote was a chance for Pat to go into additional detail, and for CTSO Guido Appenzeller to provide a demo of the cross cloud in action. Pat also let us know about updates to key VMware solutions that are helping to advance the cross-cloud architecture vision, including vSphere 6.5, Virtual SAN 6.5 and vRealize Automation 7.2. Check out the news here.

We were treated to a live demo of VMware Cloud on Amazon Web Services, bringing to life the announcement from last week. The demo demonstrated just how easy it is to create and manage a VMware powered public cloud environment on AWS, and how seamlessly it can work with private VMware environments. As you can see from some of the reactions (Here and here), the general release of VMware Cloud on AWS in mid-2017 can’t come soon enough for some!

Following the VMworld keynote, we then had the chance to watch the VMware AirWatch Connect 2016 keynote. Ian Evans, MD AirWatch EMEA, Sanjay Poonen, General Manager of End-User Computing and Noah Wasmer, General Manager and Senior VP for Mobile Products at VMware all provided an overview of VMware’s approach to end-user computing, and the integral role Workspace One plays in this. What’s more, Noah also provided an in-depth run-down of the key features of Workspace One – check them out here.

We’ll be updating you tomorrow on the highlights from the day two keynote, and sharing our best bits from VMworld and AirWatch Connect to date, so don’t miss out. In the meantime, why not see what we’re up to on Twitter?